A few new exciting netbook models have been announced in anticipation of CES 2010, this time from Compaq and HP.

The first is the Compaq Mini CQ10 netbook. This new machine will run the 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, a HDD up to 250 GB, Wi-Fi, GMA 3150 graphics and a 6-cell battery. You should be able to get this thing for around $260 within weeks.

Next is the HD Edition of the HP Mini 210 netbook. We’ve already seen a preliminary leak of the new HP netbook’s specs, and our latest info corroborates those findings. You can expect a 1.66 GHz Atom N450, GMA 3150 graphics, and the new Broadcom Crystal HD chip for media acceleration. The HP Mini 210 HD will cost around $330.

Both netbooks will ship on or around January 7th, according to the latest available information.

Special chips from Nvidia and Broadcom will soon become available for netbook lovers and will enable them to get faster HD video on their new machines. This is a relief, considering that the Pineview line of Intel Atom processors is not yet beefy enough to run the best HD.

Intel Netbook Merketing director Anil Nanduri explained that Intel chips will work in conjunction with the new Broadcom MCM70015 Crystal HD chip, a component offering support for Windows Media Player 12 and Adobe Flash Player 10.1.

Furthermore, more netbooks packing the Nvidia ION should become available in the near future, according to Nvidia product line manager David Ragones:

“With Ion you’ll be able watch Hulu HD or YouTube HD at either 720 or 1080. With standard Intel components without Ion you won’t be able to do that… Another category is Blu-ray video. If you want to watch the latest Blu-ray movie that just came out, you can absolutely do that on an Ion Netbook.”

Gaming is another category that will become available on Nvidia ION netbooks.

The Google Chrome operating system isn’t pre-installed on netbooks just yet, but if you’re interested, below are some netbooks that have been “officially” tested and that claim to be compatible with the software. On these netbooks, you can assume that everything works, including 802.11 Wi-Fi, Ethernet, the touchpad, and the suspend/resume functions.

The company may have also licensed ARM Cortex A9 multicore processor technology in order to implement the Media Accelerator. If their chips are widely implemented in netbooks or MIDs the results could be devices with stronger, cheaper media capabilities.

The fact that the Broadcom Enhanced Media Accelerator is based on ARM architecture means we can also expect it to use less energy than products from Intel, VIA, or AMD. However, most major Windows OSes won’t work on ARM devices.